The Butterfly Mistake

The Implosion of the Population Bomb

By Howard Bloom

When we left off in our last exciting episode, you had started a PR firm in a field you know nothing about — rock music. It was what you hope it would be — a tiny window into the forces of history. You helped champion subcultures using music to assert their right to exist — from a Southern community trying to break out of the ghetto of the Bible Belt with country crossover; a Texas culture trying to express its dignity through the music of ZZ Top; the gay community seeking to liberate itself through its chosen music, disco; to the white middle class rebellions of heavy metal and punk, and two musical forms that the black community was using to assert its identity — rap and the sort of black crossover manifested in two of your clients, Prince and Michael Jackson. You were asked to help expand the visibility of Amnesty International in North America. You were asked to kick off Farm Aid. You work with the Black United Fund, the United Negro College Fund, and the NAACP. You were named Ambassador of Texas Culture to the World by the mayor of Houston and the unofficial musical spokesman of the gay community in New York City in the same month, despite the fact that you were neither Texan nor gay. Insiders let you into their communities. They let you see firsthand how their subcultures had distinct worldviews, distinct ways of…